“Still doesn’t seem right somehow.”
“I think it was the thought of his children living with the scandal that sent him over the edge. If he didn’t have them, he might not have cared what anyone thought. He wouldn’t have taken the honorable way out. He would have gone to the press. You have no idea what a father would do for his children.”
Chapter 27
Lila drove past her reserved space near the entrance of Randolph General and parked in a spot behind the building. She felt vulnerable in the mostly empty lot. It wasn’t the thought of her assassin that made her nervous. It was the thought of her visit showing up in the press that made her wary. She wouldn’t be named, of course, not when she hadn’t announced her role as prime, but it wouldn’t take a genius to guess her identity based on a thinly disguised euphemism. The heir who favors black. The favorite daughter of the wolves. The serpent’s downfall. Any of them would be easy to guess.
Before disembarking from the car, she checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her makeup still obscured the bruise upon her jaw. She slid her sunglasses over her eyes and quickly arranged her scarf around her neck, then darted through the back entrance, sans coat.
Her vibrating palm drew her attention as she scampered upstairs. I’ve arrived at the clinic, Helen had written.
Me too, Lila typed before sliding the device back into her pocket. She jogged up another flight of stairs and crossed the hall, ducking quickly through the double doors of the clinic. Only a teenager had spied her from the opposite end of the hall, but he’d been too focused on a row of snack machines to look up.
Luckily, the clinic’s front desk was dark and empty. Lila fiddled with her sunglasses while she waited for Helen, careful to hide her family’s coat of arms in case anyone peeked in and saw her.
“Come inside,” Helen said, opening the door in the back. “No one should arrive for another hour. If we’re lucky, no one will even know you were here.”
Lila followed her into an exam room, the scent of cinnamon cleanser thick in the air. “If we’re not lucky?”
“Then I’ll sneak you out.” Helen patted the exam table.
Lila didn’t have the energy to resist. She removed her glasses and placed them on a chair in the corner, then folded her scarf and laid it on top. The paper on the exam table crinkled as she sat down.
Helen winced at Lila’s neck. She asked a few questions about the attack that Lila didn’t want to answer, but didn’t pester her for details and didn’t make Lila speak any more than was necessary. Indeed, she completed the exam as quickly as possible, though she insisted on pressing Lila’s ribs to see if La Roux had broken them.
Lila shrank back too quickly for Helen’s comfort.
The doctor took several X-rays and even a blood sample, ignoring Lila’s protests. “I know you think you’re fine, Lila, but you’ve been through a lot. Let me do my job,” she admonished before capping the vial and promising to walk it to the lab herself.
“I don’t want—”
“Your name is not on it. Just sit tight. I’ll be back in a sec.”
When the doctor’s steps retreated from the clinic, Lila put on her sweater and retrieved her palm. She’d nearly sent a message to Tristan and Dixon the night before, letting them know that the Baron had finally been caught. But every time she’d tried to write the message, she couldn’t progress past the first few words. Nothing sounded right, and she’d decided last night to write it later.
Later had come, and she still had the same problem.
Helen entered with her X-rays, latching them on to a lit screen on the back wall. Her finger traced over the translucent bones, and she cocked her head to the side to study them. “Nothing is broken, even though you’re more bruise than person at this point. You’ve been through quite a trauma, Lila. You should go home and rest. Let your body heal.”
“That’s not possible. I start working for my mother tomorrow.”
“Work can wait.”
“Clearly, you haven’t spent enough time with my mother.”
“You forget, I grew up with her,” Helen said, tossing her stethoscope over her neck. “You let me worry about your mother. I’ll get you a few days’ rest.”
The doctor sat down on a rolling stool, which rattled dully as she moved closer. “Now on to the next order of business. Since the office was closed yesterday for the Closing Ball, I had time to look into Dr. Rubio. Actually, I’ve been looking into her for the last few days. I just hadn’t found anything.”
“You found something?”
Helen nodded. “I drove to Dr. Rodriguez’s lab. I didn’t think the trip would yield anything, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The good doctor has been doing some brilliant work in the last ten years, and she didn’t mind spending the morning boasting to a colleague. I couldn’t believe how much further she’s taken her research since Dr. Rubio left the group. They’ve isolated the really nasty compounds in NAT, including the one that halts sperm production. They’ve been puzzling out exactly how it works, hoping that they might understand it well enough to produce a treatment for male infertility.”
“Perhaps such a treatment might be used for Senator Dubois.”
“They’re decades away from anything like that. But while having lunch with Dr. Rodriguez, I mentioned Dr. Rubio’s name. I wanted to get the doctor’s impressions of her. Turns out that Dr. Rubio visited the lab almost a year ago. Some of their samples also went missing around that time.”
“What sort of samples?”